


Like Fire, Clean and Burning

by stuffy_j



Series: Reaper76 Week [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Memories, Reaper76 Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 17:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9334598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stuffy_j/pseuds/stuffy_j
Summary: The Reaper remembers, even if he doesn't want to.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Reaper76 Week over on tumblr. Day 1: History/Decay.
> 
> I'm edgedadhell on tumblr. Feel free to stop by!

This one was painful.

The Reaper flowed into the shadows, hoping that disintegration would get rid of the sudden sharp pain in his head. No pain if there were no nerves to spark, right? It had worked several times in the past, but it seemed to be getting better now at dodging the Reaper’s tricks. Even when he was particles, when he was dust in the darkness, he could feel an echo of the pain, like well-worn tracks that a cart was only more than happy to settle back into, traveling down the road once again.

He growled, the particles of his throat vibrating separately in the air, floating and distant from one another. It wasn’t all that impressive a sound, honestly. More like a faint buzz than the animalistic growl he usually summoned.

Trickling through a crack in a door, the Reaper rebuilt his body in the darkness and relative safety of what appeared to be an abandoned bedroom at the Watchpoint. The sounds of fighting drifted down the corridor outside, but no one would realize he was in here. The crack in the door was miniscule. The Reaper clutched his head, the metal of his talons tinging faintly off his mask. The pain had resettled, and he knew it wouldn’t go away until he got it over with.

 _What is it this time?_ he wondered, stumbling to the sagging bed that sat in the middle of the room. Sitting down on it released a cloud of dust into the air, but the Reaper was past caring for his lungs. They kicked up one pathetic cough in a mockery of functionality. The Reaper hardly noticed, eyes closed against the swathe of moonlight that filtered through the dirty window and lit up the dust particles. Eyes closed against the pain in his head, like it would make a goddamn difference. He snarled, then flinched as the pain flared in his temples.

“Just fucking get it over with,” he mumbled to nothing, to the air perhaps, to the throbbing behind his eyes. “Just show me already.”

The door to the bedroom opened. The Reaper looked up, surprised, as Jack walked through the door, golden hair shining in the sunlight-- _when had the sun risen?_ \--that streamed clearly through the window. Jack looked concerned, faint lines not nearly as deep as they should be-- _would be, you idiot, would be_ \--crinkling around his eyes and across his forehead as he took in the Reaper sitting on the bed.

“What’s the matter, Gabe?” Jack said, quickly crossing the room and taking the Reaper’s hand in his own. “You okay?” No, not the Reaper’s hand--the gloves were gone, talons exchanged for blunt fingernails, heavy black cloth and armor ceding to warm, unprotected brown skin. The Reaper could no longer feel the weight of the mask covering his face, over his head, shielding him from all sides. Jack raised his other hand, cupping the Reaper’s-- _no, Gabriel’s, he was Gabriel again, thank god_ \--cheek, palm warm and comforting, leeching the pain away like he was drawing it out of Gabriel’s head.

Gabriel turned his face into Jack’s hand, closing his eyes against the sensation, the warmth of skin against skin, the dry roughness of Jack’s palm, callouses worn from carrying guns too heavy for the average human. “Yeah,” he said, tucking a kiss against that warmth, the pain a distant memory--maybe just a dream? A nightmare he’d just woken up from--“Yeah, Jackie, don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

Jack smiled down at him, lines around his eyes now but they were supposed to be there, tracing out every single smile Gabriel had given him over the years rather than the frowns. “Okay,” he said simply, accepting, happy. His thumb traced Gabriel’s cheekbone, a soothing line of motion. “Just let me know if you’re getting one of those headaches again, yeah? Here, let me close the curtains.” He moved to take his hand from Gabriel’s face.

“No!” Gabriel said, bringing his hand up to keep Jack in place. Jack looked down at him, blue eyes startled. Was the light shining more brightly from his hair? It looked like a halo, like one of those paintings of Saint Francis his abuela had up on her wall.

_In the far back corner of his mind, the Reaper scoffed at his own heavy-handed symbolism. Jack had never been a saint, no matter how much he had tried to fool the world. But he had come close._

“No,” Gabriel said again, calmer this time, “it’s okay. Really. This one isn’t that bad.” He smiled up at Jack, just a small quirk of his lips. “I can hardly feel it anymore,” he said.

Jack looked back at him, steady, eyes unfathomable. They were like that more and more, the color of the ocean as it drops suddenly, where the continental shelf ends and the uncharted depths begin. Gabriel loved and hated that color. “If you’re sure,” Jack said.

Tugging on the hand against his cheek, Gabriel urged Jack to sit on the bed beside him, then lay them both down, heads against the thin, regulation pillows. “Yeah,” he said softly, clasping their hands between them, falling into the depths of Jack’s eyes. _Were they deeper than he remembered?_ “Yeah, I’m sure.” He closed his eyes, dizzy. The pain was gone.

Gabriel opened his eyes, and it was night again. The moonlight trickled through the dust in the air. There was weight on his face, black and metal on his hands. The bed sagged and creaked beneath him as he sat up, the springs in the mattress squealing horribly. The pain in his head was gone, had shown him what it wanted him to remember. “Goddammit,” growled the Reaper.

The faint report of gunfire echoed through the door, and he could hear voices shouting in the distance. Right. They were still in the process of infiltrating the watchpoint, had run across some trouble in the south wing. The Reaper still wasn’t clear what the issue was, having been blindsided by the pain right as the screaming had started over the comms. Now that his little episode was over, he was back in the fight.

Passing once more through the crack in the door-- _don’t think about the room don’t think about what was left behind_ \--the Reaper flowed through the shadows, seeking out the heart of the issue. And there it was: Talon operatives getting the everloving shit kicked out of them by what appeared to be an old man in a gaudy leather jacket. The Reaper rolled his eyes--or would have, if he had been corporeal at that point--before rematerializing and pulling out his shotguns, firing at the large “76” on the man’s back. Leather Jacket went sprawling, clutching his side and groaning softly. The noise was faintly distorted by the mask that covered the majority of his face, leaving only his forehead and part of a nasty scar visible under his shock of white hair. The Talon operatives scattered, content to let the Reaper deal with the complication.

The man in the leather jacket whipped around to face the Reaper when it became obvious that the others were running away, a heavy pulse rifle held in his sure grasp. The visor above his mask glowed red in the darkness of the hallway, casting a menacing light over the scene. A moment of hesitation, the two men sizing each other up, before gunshots echoed and bodies dove out of the way. The man in the leather jacket was panting, the Reaper could hear his ragged breaths in the air, tearing through the sudden quiet left behind in the wake of the gunfire. Faint shafts of moonlight trickled down into the hallway from bullet holes in the ceiling, glancing off the man’s white hair like a halo, like the pale echo of golden sunlight off golden hair--

In his distraction, the Reaper failed to notice the man in the leather jacket load the helix rockets swiftly into his pulse rifle. Only the blast of light from the muzzle of the rifle and the Reaper’s own reflexes saved him from serious injury as the man in the leather jackets launched the rockets at the Reaper, who quickly disintegrated and let the rockets crash into the wall behind him. Leather jacket was trying to run, but he couldn’t hide as easily in the shadows, and the Reaper caught up to him, flowed around him, knocked him onto his back with a blow that also, apparently, dislodged the visor and mask, as both pieces clattered to the floor. The Reaper rematerialized, kneeling next to the other man’s body, idly knocking the pulse rifle out of reach and withdrawing one of his shotguns. Time to take care of the pest.

The man in the leather jacket groaned softly, a faint “Shit” falling from his scarred mouth. His eyes opened, disoriented, and the color of the drop-off point of the ocean stared uncomprehendingly at the Reaper for a moment before widening in shock. The man in the leather jacket scrambled for his pulse rifle, and the Reaper didn’t stop him. He couldn’t. All the Reaper could do was fall apart, dissolve into the air, race down the corridor and away.

The man in the leather jacket glanced around the now-empty corridor, locking his mask and visor back into place before carefully standing up. A faint hiss was all that was left of the Reaper, a question hanging in the air to never be answered:

_Jack?_


End file.
